


The Final Moments Before The Bomb Drops

by lateralus



Category: Breaking Bad
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-10
Updated: 2017-01-10
Packaged: 2018-09-16 15:24:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,941
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9277931
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lateralus/pseuds/lateralus
Summary: Walt is hidden away in his secluded cabin prison in New Hampshire, Jesse is prisoner in the neo-Nazis' compound, and Skyler may forever remain a prisoner long after Walt is gone. Time is the only thing they each have left, and it is steadily ticking away. Set during 'Granite Slate' and 'Felina'; the moments leading up to Walt's death that weren't shown on screen. Written for the 2016 Blue Christmeth Fic Exchange.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [NiebuhrAndWiegh](https://archiveofourown.org/users/NiebuhrAndWiegh/gifts).



> So, I've never actually written BrBa fic before, but being a big fan of the show, I finally decided to jump feet-first into the BrBa fandom by signing up to the 2016 Blue Christmeth fic exchange. The prompt is, "Walt alone in New Hampshire; just some little moments that move him toward accepting his true motives", however the fic ended up taking on a bit of a life of its own, as fics are wont to do.
> 
> To the fic recipient, @NiebuhrAndWiegh: I hope you enjoy!

*

_I heard a Fly buzz - when I died -_  
_The Stillness in the Room_  
_Was like the Stillness in the Air_ …  


— **_I heard a Fly buzz - when I died by Emily Dickinson._**

*

Walt stands at the cabin door, peering out the grimy, four-paned window. Morning sunshine glimmers off the snow smothering the ground, the trees. Somewhere nearby, a lone bird call trills forlornly. A brief gust of frozen wind hammers with a shudder against the creaky old cabin. The moment it dies down, pale silence settles back in its in place, thick and suffocating like white noise.

Another bitterly deserted day. Another day of waiting. Waiting, for his chance to get the money to his family, or for the Feds to catch up with him, or for the cancer to finally win. The gamble is not knowing which will happen first. This must be what prison is like. Cold. Bleak. Mercilessly lonely. A place where there is nothing left to do but wait.

His hand, gaunt and spindly with his deteriorating weight loss, comes up to absently toy with his wedding ring hanging around his neck on fraying twine. He is a pitiful sight, stooped over weakly in his shabby beige sweater, his off-white long johns drooping off his skeletal hips and legs; a pathetic, decaying shadow of the great Heisenberg. 

A gravelly, wheezing cough suddenly erupts from Walt's chest. His hand abandons his wedding ring to slap against the door, to catch his balance. He doubles over, throat seized up in choking, hacking spasms. Black spots swim around in his vision. His eyes water. His legs almost buckle underneath him. Spittle sprays from his mouth, stringy with flecks of blood.

As the cough finally eases to a breathless, sickly rattle deep in his lungs, a buzzing noise, taunting and shrill, hums past his ear. Walt wipes his mouth with a smear of his shaky hand and glances back up at the window. There, on the glass: A housefly. 

A curious frown quirks on Walt's brow. “What on Earth...?” he begins, murmuring under his breath. Most insects cannot survive in blistering cold weather, flies especially. He watches it scurry a few inches across the glass, pause, and rub its legs together. A black, contaminating piece of vermin; a niggling, accusing annoyance that has been festering away in his secluded cabin cell. Surviving despite the odds, as though it is surviving out of sheer spite.

He slowly, slowly lifts his hand, and waits. Waits. Then suddenly, he slaps his palm against the glass over the fly. Too slow: The fly, startled, zips away and darts off into the dimness of the cabin. 

Another cough seizes up in his chest and this time, as he wipes away more blood-streaked spit from his mouth and drags himself back to his bed, he thinks to himself: There's not much time left.

He is a ticking, cancer-filled timebomb. Tick, tick, tick.

*

The chains rattle and clank around Jesse's ankles and wrists as Todd leads him from the meth lab out into the cold, frosty night. Jesse looks up. The moon hangs big and white and gibbous in the inky black sky dotted with stars. These moments, when he is taken to or from his cell, are the only few moment of selfish freedom he has left: Being able to look up at the clouds, or the moon, or the stars, before he is locked away like a dog back in his cement prison.

He slows to a stop. Todd's repulsive hand tugs on his arm but Jesse ignores it. He closes his eyes and lets his head fall back while savouring the soft kiss of the cool night air on his bruised and battered face. If only he was a bird, so he could fly soar up into the sky, far, far away, and never turn back.

Another tug of Todd's hand on his arm. “C'mon. Uncle Jack'll get real mad if he sees you standing out here like this.”

“So, kill me,” comes Jesse's flat answer, eyes still closed, face still turned up to the sky.

Todd chuckles that eerie childlike little chuckle of his. “You know I can't do that.” He gives Jesse's arm an affectionate little squeeze. A shiver of powerless, nauseating fear shudders through Jesse's bones. “You're part of the family now.”

Jesse clenches his jaw and fights back a wave of disgust. He opens his eyes and peers with a helpless, trembling anger up at the moon. “What would you know about family, you sick fuck.”

“Hey. C'mon.” Another chilling little chuckle, like this is all nothing but an amusing little joke to him. “You matter to us. To _me_ , at least. Maybe not as much as you mattered to Mr. White or to Andrea, but--”

Snapping his head down to look at Todd, Jesse fixes him with a look of cold fury. “Don't you dare say her name.”

Todd blinks with calm innocence. “What? Andrea?”

The chains rattle louder as Jesse violently jerks his arm from Todd's viper-like grip. “Don't you _dare_ say her name!” 

The shrieking words tearing from Jesse's throat echo across the deserted compound. Todd grabs hold of his arm again, hard and rough this time. Jesse works up as much saliva as he can muster in his dry mouth and spits at Todd's face.

“ _Hey_!” Todd snaps with icy calmness, spit drooling down his cheek. “You better stop that. I don't wanna have to hurt you.”

“ _DON'T YOU DARE SAY HER NAME_!” 

Todd's fist suddenly slams into Jesse's stomach; a savage, brutal blow. A choking wheeze strangles from Jesse's throat. He doubles over, staggering, chains jangling as his knees buckle under him. He collapses to the ground and a bubble of vomit ominously rumbles up his gullet.

Todd stands over Jesse, watching him. Calmly, like he is chiding a child: “You should know better than to make me angry, Jesse. What have told you about being good, huh?”

The door of the gang's hideout bangs open. Kenny strides out mid-drag of his cigarette. “What's goin' on out here? Thought I heard someone hollerin'.”

Todd looks over his shoulder, watching Kenny approach. On the ground, Jesse claws at the gravelly cement while fighting for breath. “Nothing,” replies Todd. “Just a little misunderstanding, is all.”

With a final drag of his smoke, Kenny comes to a stop beside Todd and peers down at Jesse. He drops the cigarette to the ground by Jesse's face and crushes it under his boot. “Little runt giving you trouble?”

“Just misbehaving a little. I got it all under control now. Might need a little help putting him to bed, though.” Todd lifts his hand to wipe the spit from his cheek.

A pained shriek rips from Jesse's mouth as the toe of Kenny's boot slams into his ribs with a viciously sadistic kick. Kenny leans over, hands braced on his knees, to inspect Jesse like he's nothing but a mongrel. “Got ourselves a bit of a feisty problem dog here, ain't we? You gonna behave yourself?”

Jesse shakily lifts his head to look up at him. Wheezing whimpers shudder from Jesse's throat as he nods, relenting and compliant. 

Kenny chuckles. He reaches a hand down to pat Jesse's bruised cheek, making him flinch in pain. “Good boy.”

Stepping around to Jesse's other side, Todd hooks an arm under Jesse's armpit while Kenny hooks an arm under the other. They haul Jesse to his feet, and he stumbles and staggers as they drag him towards his cement prison. Once they have forced him back into his urine-stenched pit, Jesse looks up from his filthy mattress, watching the metal grate shut with a heavy, metallic clunk. A fly buzzing around his piss bucket hums through the air and lands on a healing open sore above his eye.

Todd peers down at him through the bars, crouched down, while Kenny's footsteps fade back to the shack. Jesse stares right back up at him, the moon casting a halo behind Todd's head. Todd smiles.

“I meant it, you know. 'Bout you bein' part of the family. You're one of us now.”

Jesse says nothing. He swallows. Bile broils in his gut. 

“And family, well,” Todd continues. “Family look out for each other, right? They do whatever it takes to protect each other.”

Still, Jesse says nothing. He wishes he could reach up through those bars and gouge his thumbs into Todd's beady, evil eyes. Push them right into his brain. Claw his face off with his fingernails. Strangle him until his breath is nothing but a gurgling death rattle in his lungs.

Todd reaches a hand into the pocket of his yellow jumpsuit. “Maybe this'll help you remember how important family is.”

He produces a rectangular piece of paper and drops it through the bars. It flutters like a feather down into the bowels of Jesse's prison and lands face-up on his grimy mattress. The picture of Andrea and Brock that had been pinned to the post inside the meth lab.

Withering despair wrenches inside him like a knife twisting into his chest. He is going to be sick. Jesse looks back up at Todd, bitter tears welling in his eyes.

“We know where Andrea and her kid live,” says Todd, casually, as if imparting little more than a benign fact about tomorrow's weather forecast. “You wouldn't wanna put 'em in any jeopardy, would you? I mean, that's the worst thing someone can do to family: turn your back on 'em. Make 'em suffer.”

Todd pushes up to his feet. “Goodnight, Jesse. Sleep tight.”

The moment Todd is out of sight, he snatches up the photograph. Clutching it to his chest, he watches the night sky disappear from view as the tattered tarpaulin is dragged noisily over the bars. The fly scurrying around on Jesse's temple, feasting on his salty blood, lifts off and buzzes aimlessly into the air as he slowly slumps down onto his side, curling up into a ball with the photograph held tightly in his fingers.

*

Pulling another cigarette out of the almost empty pack, Skyler purses it between her lips and snaps the lighter aflame. The refrigerator clicks on with a low, rattling hum in the dark, silent kitchen as she lights the tip and takes a long, slow drag. Smoke fills her lungs, dry and warm and cancerous; the only selfish pleasure she has left in her deplorable, hollowed out life.

In the next room, Holly fusses softly in her sleep, blissfully unaware of the chaos that has eroded away at every last good thing their life once held. For the thousandth time in what feels like as many months, Skyler wonders, as she takes another drag, if Holly will grow to despise her as much as Flynn does; if Holly will regard her with the same empty hatred that simmers in Flynn's eyes every time he so much as looks at her. God knows she deserves it, even if it makes her wish the ground would swallow her whole until she is nothing but a bag of dusty, rotten bones.

Another long, slow drag. Smoke curls into the air from her cigarette, dreary and ghostlike. A fly buzzes past her face. She shoos it away with a careless flick of her wrist while tapping ash into the overflowing ashtray. The fly flitters off towards the murky kitchen and lands on the clock affixed to the kitchen wall ticking a slow, steady metronome. Counting down the hours, minutes, seconds, like a bomb waiting to detonate. 

A car purrs past outside, wheels sloshing over the rain-sodden road. Skyler snaps out of her bleak reverie with a sudden tense glance darted towards the front door. She holds her breath, listening for any telltale sign of the car slowing down, of a car door slamming, of footsteps approaching. She can't help it. If it is not the Feds watching her every move, it is the ever-lurking threat that Walt is somewhere nearby. Paranoia has eaten its way into her every waking moment, keeping her prisoner. She hopes, like the bitter monster these past couple of years have twisted her into, that Walt is dead. A corpse decaying somewhere in the New Mexico desert the way Hank was left to die, flies crawling all over his motionless, cancer-ridden flesh. Even if she is cuffed and locked away in a prison cell, never to see the light of day again once the Feds have wrung out every last shred of truth from her, at least Walt can no longer harm her family, her children, if he is gone.

Except, deep down, she knows: Walt is far from gone. He is too smart, too calculating, too relentless and spiteful to simply _die_ without having the last word. He is still out there somewhere, hiding. Waiting, like a low-lying serpent. It is only a matter of time before he strikes again.

*

“Do you like it?” asks Walt, voice pale and croaky. “'Disappearing' people?”

Ed looks up from the butterfly needle he's about to insert into Walt's arm. Outside, the wind howls and screams across the desolate snow, hammering against the cabin like a tortured ghost. He turns his attention back down to the needle.

“I'm good at what I do.” A short, matter-of-fact answer. 

Walt watches him. “That's not what I asked.”

Ed squints at the vein he is palpating with his fingertip. “I shouldn't have to point out to you that I don't make a habit of discussing my job with my clients. Not even the infirm ones.”

“Oh, come on.” A faint, wry smile ghosts across Walt's dry lips. “I haven't a soul for miles to even say 'good morning' to. Your secrets will be taken to the grave with mine long before I'd even get the chance. Humour a dying old man.”

“The ones with nothing left to lose are the ones I trust least with my secrets, Mr. Lambert.”

“Yet you return every month, at the same time, like clockwork.”

“I already explained to you that you're a special case.”

Walt lets out a humourless little chuckle. It comes out rattly, edged with the threat of another choking coughing fit. “It would be easier to simply leave me out here to die, wouldn't it?”

Ed's eyes flick up to him. “Like I said. I'm good at what I do. That's all there is to it. Now hold still.”

A pinch as the needle bites into his skin in the crook of his elbow. It slides smoothly into the vein. Walt barely flinches. Letting the belt go slack around his arm, he presses a thin finger down on the cannula while Ed rips off a strip of medical tape. Needle secured in place by the tape, Ed sits back, tossing the spiel of tape over onto the table strewn with latest delivery of newspapers and supplies, the chair squeaking quietly under his shifting weight. 

“But you must _enjoy_ it, surely,” Walt finally continues. The familiar cold trickle of chemotherapy begins creeping into his arm; a sensation that will last only a few seconds. “Creating entire lives for people. Making their old life simply...” Walt lifts his emaciated hand with a dismissing wave, like he is shooing away a pesky fly. “Disappear. Just like that.” His hand settles back onto the armrest. “When you think about it... You get to play God.”

Ed considers Walt for a moment. “Yes,” he replies simply. “I enjoy it.” The chair squeaks again as he stands up. “And not to cut this little chit-chat short, but--”

“You have to head back,” interjects Walt flatly. “I know.”

Ed gives a vague, apologetic shrug. “It was hell driving out here in this wind. Gonna be worse driving back. Big storm heading in from the north tonight. I recommend you block up your door and windows before it hits.”

The floorboards creak under Ed's heavy footsteps. Walt stares at nothing in particular, quiet and despondent, while Ed moves around the cabin unpacking the last few items. The sound of another person moving around, filling up the lonely, secluded space is pathetically comforting, something Walt wishes he could hold onto for a little while longer. 

Ed heads for the door. He stops before he opens it, turning to look at Walt. “Any last requests before I make tracks?”

Walt's tired, sunken eyes drift up to Ed. Lucky, he thinks, that Ed gets to go home, to a home, to his wife, his family, if he has one. “I liked it.”

A questioning frown skims across Ed's brow.

“The meth business. I liked it.”

Ed lingers silently at the door, as though letting Walt savour his last few precious moments of human interaction before being plunged back into another month of solitude.

“You have to understand, I did it _all_ for my family,” Walt continues, “but...”

“But really, you did all for yourself,” finishes Ed.

“ _No_ ,” Walt firmly corrects, “my family has _always_ been--”

His words are suddenly cut off by a rattling cough seizing up in his throat. He lurches forward, his face contorting with pain as the hacking cough wheezes out of him in a violent spasm. It seems to go on and on, his lungs growing tighter and tighter in near futile fight for breath. The cough's death grip finally takes mercy on him, releasing him from its chokehold. Gasping, he slumps in the chair, wiping blood away from his mouth while tears of exertion dribble down his cheeks from his watery eyes. 

Over by the door, Ed is still hovering motionless. A hint of pity has worked its way to the surface of his gruff face. Another blustering blast of wind wallops at the windows and shudders ferociously at the walls, drowning out the commiserative silence that has taken the place of Walt's grim coughing fit.

“I'm in the business of second chances,” Ed finally says while Walt struggles to catch his breath. “Ain't my business to tell people what to do with their second chances, but maybe you oughta make peace with yours while you still have time. Accept it for what it is.”

Walt shakily pushes his glasses up the bridge of his nose. He feels like such a weak, pathetic thing. Like a haggard old dog dying a slow, painful, humiliating death on the side of a deserted highway. “And what...” A panting gulp. His throat is raw, his chest burning. “And what would that be?”

Ed hesitates, lips pursed, like he's debating whether to weigh in on a matter he truly has no professional interest in. “If you truly did do it all for your family, like you keep insisting you did, you wouldn't be living out your last days hiding out in the New Hampshire wilderness while your family is left to pick up the pieces.”

“You don't understand the situation, Ed, I have no _choice_ \--”

“I understand enough. I'm just telling it like it is.”

Walt opens his mouth to argue. A weak aftershock of a cough catches in his throat instead, robbing him of his chance to explain. By the time the cough has subsided, Ed has pulled his thick gloves on and has a hand resting on the door handle.

“Best be off. See you in a month. Take care, Mr. Lambert.”

Ed opens the door. A fierce gust of wind bursts into the tiny cabin, icy and cruel and vehement. The newspaper clippings of Skyler, of Jesse, of the whole Heisenberg investigation affixed to the wall behind Walt flutter violently, and the dusty fraying curtains flap against the grimy windows. Ed wrestles the door shut behind him. 

Everything abruptly settles to a deathly stillness, while the wind continues raging angrily outside. Over its roar, the sound of Ed's propane truck sputters to life. The sinking reality of solitude comes crashing back down around Walt's ears while the chug of the engine rumbles away into the distance. 

The fly, still buzzing around in the warmth of the cabin, lands on the strip of tape holding the needle in Walt's vein. Walt doesn't notice it. He is too lost in thought about how he needs to put it all right before he runs out of time.

*

The tarpaulin flutters in the breeze with a crunch of plastic canvas over the thick steel bars. The stench of urine and human waste and days-old sweat permeate every inch of Jesse's squalid concrete cell. He sits hunched on his filthy mattress, clutching the grubby picture of Andrea and Brock in his hands; the last thing he has left of the life he could have had. Up above in the distance, raucous laughter cuts through the lonely silence. Those neo-Nazi fucks. Laughing and getting drunk like they haven't a care in the world.

He traces a dirt-caked finger across Andrea's face, over Brock's, with jittery tenderness. A small, wistful smile trembles briefly on his bruised and chapped lips. He has no right to miss them; he has no right to miss the way Andrea used to gently touch him while they all watched TV together like a family, or the way Brock would laugh in gleeful delight when he would beat Jesse at a video game. He can't help missing them, though. He misses them so much it hurts, like an icepick being driven deeper and deeper into his chest. They were the closest thing to family he ever had.

The fly still buzzing around his piss bucket swoops over to Jesse and lands on Andrea's face. He watches it scuttle around, rubbing its legs and its filth all over it, the small smile playing on his scarred up face fading back into nothingness. His mind conjures up a sickening thought of Andrea's face, lifeless and glassy-eyed. Like Jane. With flies crawling all over, feeding on dead flesh. His mind then cruelly taunts him with the thought of Brock lying sprawled in a pool of spreading blood. Like Drew Sharp. Like Tomás. 

A lurching sense of dread trickles into his gut; a nauseous anger, simmering with terror and grief. Disgust, too, at himself. At Mr. White. At the Nazis and their sick, depraved enjoyment of dangling Andrea and Brock's life over his head while they bleed him dry of every last thing he has left to live for like a gutted pig.

He gives the photograph a quick, alarmed shake. The fly buzzes back into the air, circling in a haphazard drone above Jesse's head. Dropping the photograph, Jesse clambers to his feet. Hunger and thirst make him sway with a wave of dizziness. With a leap, he takes a wild swipe at the fly. It brushes between his fingers but escapes unscathed, darting up out of reach and landing on the cement wall high above him.

Another burst of raucous laughter bellows into the cold night somewhere up above in the compound as Jesse stares up at the fly. He swallows hard and tries to fight back the panicked, helpless fury welling in him. 

There is not much time left. Jesse can feel it in his bones, rotting like cancer. He has to get out of here.

*

“Do you want pizza for dinner? Or Chinese, perhaps?”

Skyler stands in the doorway of the kitchen, watching Flynn. He is slouched on the ratty couch. The TV is on, though Flynn is staring at it with a lifeless expression, like he's looking through the screen into space.

Silence hangs heavy and suffocating. In the kitchen, the clock ticks, ticks, ticks. Skyler nervously toys with her necklace while chewing on her lip, then heaves a sigh as she crosses her arms over her middle. She is certain that if she keeps trying to talk to her son, if she keeps trying to break through the cold wall that is now a permanent fixture between them, something will explode. She is terrified, however, that if she doesn't keep trying, she will one day lose him forever. 

“Flynn?”

“Don't care. I'm not hungry.”

Skyler closes her eyes. With another sigh, she drops her arms from her middle and turns away. Heading into the tiny kitchen, she pulls a frozen pizza from the freezer, sets it aside on the counter, and switches on the oven. In the background, a baby diaper commercial is playing: a saccharine, lullaby-like jingle informing mothers and fathers and families alike that everyone needs a hug now and then; that family is the most important thing a baby can have.

She tears open the pizza box, her lower lip beginning to quiver. A thick, painful lump swells in her throat. What she would do for a hug; a simple, comforting hug. How she longs to feel warm, solid, soothing arms around her. A fly hums past her face. She absently shoos it away.

Suddenly, the front door slams shut. Skyler whirls around in alarm. She strides to the kitchen door – and stops short. The living room is empty. A faint, furious _tap, tap_ of Flynn's crutches retreat down the footpath outside.

*

The stench of vomit hangs heavy in the cabin. Walt is curled on his side, on the cramped, freezing bathroom floor. He is bathed in a cold, feverish sweat. His bones ache. A headache pounds like a jackhammer in his skull. Black spots dance around in his eyes, even when he squeezes them shut. Outside the cabin, the wind is still howling, moaning and twisting around the trees and snatching up fresh fallen snow in angry gust.

The chemotherapy is going to kill him before the cancer does. He is fighting a losing battle. Maybe he was always fighting a losing battle. Maybe it really would be a mercy if he were simply to breathe his last breath. 

_All I can do is wait_ , Skyler had told him, months ago. _Hold on. Bide my time. And wait. For the cancer to come back._

A delirious little chuckle bubbles out of him. “Looks like you finally got your wish, Skyler,” he mutters into the tiny, empty, cell-like bathroom. 

His tongue clicks sluggishly in his mouth, dry like cotton wool. He rolls onto his back, the coldness of the tiles sharp and relieving like water on a burning beach against his sweaty skin. Skyler, he thinks to himself. Oh, Skyler. He knows he has no right to wish that she was sitting with him now, pillow under his head, her soft hand stroking his damp, clammy hair while she hums gently under her breath. He can't help it, though. Slipping deeper into a feverish lucid sleep, her face wades into his mind, so vivid it is like she is right there beside him. All that love she once had for him had been the only thing that helped him get through the sleepless, agonising, chemo-fevered nights all those months ago, when the cancer had just invaded their lives. That, and the assurance that his family was taken care of. 

Or perhaps, really, it was the itching thrill of biding his time for his next cook that got him through those nights. The purpose it gave him. The excitement. The rush. The drug it had become, feeding into his veins. Nothing had made him feel more alive. Not even his own family, his own flesh and blood.

His head lolls listlessly against the hard floor. He is slipping deeper, deeper, floating down into a dark, delirious haze. Jesse swims into his thoughts, dreamlike, almost surreal. Jesse, Jesse... The lost, idiotic boy that he can't help but think of as his own son. An endless thorn in his side; a loyal problem dog that would come back with his tail between his legs every time Walt kicked him hard enough. An easy, eager thing to manipulate, to mold and shape into his own image. Only Jesse truly knew him, really. Not Skyler. Not his own son. Not Marie, nor Hank. Jesse. And Walt had sacrificed him to Jack Welker's gang, like he was nothing more than a sacrificial pig being led off to slaughter.

“It had to be done,” he babbles drowsily as his eyes droop shut, unaware that he is muttering aloud, “had to be done, Jesse. Had to be... Had to think of my f...family... Family. Had to think of Skyler. My son. My baby girl. I know you understand.” The fly hums into the bathroom and settles on the lens of Walt's glasses lying crooked on his face. Behind his glasses, a lone tear trickles down his cheek. “I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I'm... I never... Sorry, Jesse. You deserved better. You deserved better. You always deserved better.”

He thinks he feels someone tenderly stroking his hair. Skyler's hand, perhaps. Maybe Jesse's. He raises a shaky hand, blindly groping in the air for it, longing for just a single moment of warm, human touch. Nothing is there, of course. Just a hallucination. His hand falls across his middle, empty, alone.

The fly buzzes its wings and rubs its legs together before scurrying curiously across the lens and onto the bridge of Walt's nose. “I'll fix it. I'm gonna...” he mumbles, only the fly there to hear his aberrant, rambling promise. It scuttles down over his nose, down to his chapped lips. Walt is too groggy with fatigue to notice. “I'll fix it. I'll fix... Make it all go away. You'll see.”

*

Jesse tried. He tried so hard to escape.

The plan was going to be this: Escape. Run for his life. Find a car, break into it, jumpstart it. Race to Andrea and Brock. Collect them both. And then just drive. He hadn't quite figured out where. Somewhere outside of Albuquerque. Somewhere outside of New Mexico. Alaska, maybe. Probably. Alaska is the furthest place from New Mexico that he can think of. 

He lies curled up on his stained, filthy mattress, while the heavy metal grate clangs shut overhead. Blood oozes from fresh wounds pounded into his face. The sobs tearing out of his raw, dry throat sound like the howl of a broken, injured animal. 

Up above, those Nazi fucks are jeering down at him. A fleck of spit lands on Jesse's face. And then, suddenly, a warm stream of water. Piss, Jesse realises. He makes the mistake of opening his eyes to look up. Kenny is standing up there over the metal bars, dick in his hand, urine spraying out.

Jesse scrambles onto his hands and knees, pain shooting through his broken body, and he crawls as fast as his grimy hands and bruised knees will take him, to the far corner of the cell. 

“C'mon, Kenny, think he's had enough punishment for one day, don't you think?” comes Todd's eerily calm voice echoing down.

“Just puttin' the little runt in his place,” answers Kenny with a leisurely tilt of his hips and a swooping arc of piss. “Sometimes you just gotta rub a disobedient dog's nose in it. Remind it who's boss.”

The stench of fresh piss clings to Jesse's clothes. Vomit churns in his stomach. The image of Andrea collapsing lifelessly on her front porch, gun smoke clouding up behind where the bullet had been fired into her head, flashes over and over and over in his mind. Grief and terror and despair slash at Jesse's ribcage, lungs, chest, heart, like a knife stabbing him again and again. Clawing up his throat like bile. Suddenly, he fumbles for his piss bucket, metal dragging across the cement, and the pungent odour of stale urine fills his nose as vomit spews out of his mouth.

“Look at him,” he hears Jack sneering. “Pukin' his guts up like a weak ass pussy.” And then, to Jesse: “Oughta teach ya not to try and mess with us. Next time you try somethin' stupid, I'll drag the dead bitch's kid here and put the gun in your hand myself.” And then, to the gang: “C'mon. Inside, boys. Give the little fucker a chance to sit and think over what he did.”

The gang's footsteps retreat from the cell. Jesse's stomach stops spasming long enough for him to slump against the wall, panting, saliva hanging in a limp string from his lips. He looks up and sees through his tears Todd standing there, staring down into Jesse's prison. For a long few moments, Todd says nothing.

“It was a real shame what we had to do tonight,” Todd finally says, simple and calm as anything. Like he might as well be telling Jesse the disappointing news that it is going to rain tonight. “Andrea seemed like a real nice lady.”

“You animals,” Jesse shrieks, his voice raw and fractured and coming out as hollow as he feels inside. “You psycho _fucks_! I'm gonna kill you! _All_ of you! I'm gonna gut you all like _pigs_! ”

Todd is already walking away, though. Jesse screams obscenities and sick, twisted threats up at the metal bars, screaming and screaming until he has run out of breath and his voice has become painfully hoarse.

Hunched in the corner of his cell, the cold night beginning to bear down on him, he shivers, teeth chattering, while staring at the pissed-soaked picture of Andrea and Brock lying on the cement floor. A coyote barks and calls a shrill howl into the silent, bleak night. A noise buzzes past his ear. The fly lands on an open cut seeping with blood on his hand. Quick and violent and angry, his other hand rails down onto it. Pain sears through the wound, and Jesse stifles a cry of pain. When he lifts his hand away, the fly is dead. Squished in a smear of oozing vermin entrails on his skin.

He flicks it off his hand and it sails off into the darkness.

*

The frozen pizza, burnt around the edges, sits cold and untouched on the kitchen table. The fly crawls across it, buzzing over charred lumps of cheese and pepperoni. The TV murmurs into the empty living room. Over the top, the clock in the kitchen keeps tick, tick, ticking away.

Skyler is in the bathroom, cramped down beside the toilet, a smouldering cigarette dangling between her trembling fingers. Soft, wracking sobs hitch in her throat. The sound of Holly's drowsy cries grizzle down the hallway. They grow steadily louder, more alert, until her cries have become a wailing demand for attention. 

Skyler doesn't move. She squeezes her eyes shut and tries to block it out.

_Mommy will be there in a minute. Just give me a minute, angel. One more minute._

A minute turns into two minutes. Three minutes. Five minutes. Ash drops off her half-smoked cigarette and lands with a crumble to the tile floor. Holly's wails have turned into screams. A shrill, distraught, “Mommy! _Mommy_!” reverberates from her room. 

_Just one more moment, angel. Just give Mommy one more moment to get her shit together. Please. Please, God, please._

The bathroom door creaks slowly open. “M...Mom?” comes Flynn's cautious voice.

Skyler looks up with red, raw eyes. Flynn stares back at her, hovering in the doorway on his crutches. His expression is unreadable.

“Are you gonna get Holly?”

Skyler doesn't answer. She feels frozen. Seized up with terror, or panic, or despair. She can't do this anymore. She just _can't_. 

“Or are you j...just gonna sit there feeling sorry for yourself?” Flynn finally continues, his tone colder. “Like the selfish bitch you are?”

His words sting like a slap across the face. She gapes at him, speechless. A tear rolls down her cheek. She swallows. Suddenly, her face crumbles. Her head hangs down as the weight of every terrible thing pressing down on her shoulders makes her sink like a stone. A wretched, broken sob cracks in her throat. The cigarette tumbles from her fingers in a scatter of ash, and she dashes her hands up to her cover face.

“I-I just... I just need a minute, okay?” 

“Why?” Flynn accuses. “So you can sit there and smoke?”

“ _No_. I just need...” Behind her hands, her face screws up, ugly and aching with pain. Holly's screams pierce over Skyler's quiet sobs.

“Holly _needs_ you, Mom.”

“I know. I _know_!”

“So, are you just gonna keep ignoring her? Pretend she doesn't exist?”

“No, _no_! I just need--”

“Screw what you need, Mom! What about what _we_ need? Your kids?”

Skyler drops her hands away from her face and looks back up at her son. “Flynn, please. Please. I know you hate me--”

“I _do_ hate you,” he fires back. “I _hate_ you! You and Dad-- You're both-- You're just--” His words are growing thick and jumbled with angry tears. “You're _pathetic_! You ruined our lives! _Both_ of you! My life! Holly's life--!”

“I know, I _know_! I'm sorry. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm _sorry_ \--!”

“Why did you let him get away with it?! Why did you help him? W...Why did you _lie_ about it? You coulda-- You shoulda been thinking of-of Holly, of me--!”

Skyler's face is twisted up in howling despair. “I was _always_ thinking of Holly! Of you! _Always_. Trying to protect you both from the monster your father had become, and I d--!”

“You're _both_ monsters!”

She stares helplessly at him, small and cornered where she is huddled on the floor. “Flynn,” she utters. “Please...”

“You should _both_ die!”

The air has been knocked right out of her. She watches him, numb, as he swipes at his tears with the sleeve of his shirt, snot beginning to dribble down his nose. A soft sob wrangles itself out of him. Suddenly, his crutches tumble from his arms, landing loudly on their bathroom floor over the top of Skyler's shriek of alarm. His legs give way and collapse. Skyler scrambles to her knees towards him while Flynn reaches for her, and she snatches him into her arms.

He presses his face into her shirt, arms grabbing her desperately around her shoulders. “I'm sorry,” he weeps, “I'm sorry, Mom, I'm sorry, I don't know why I said that, I'm sorry--”

“Shhh. Shhh. It's okay. It's okay.” Cradling his head to her chest, Skyler curls her knees around him and rocks him back and forth gently.

“I'm sorry, I'm sorry,” he keeps babbling, “I'm sorry, I'm sorry.”

She kisses the top of his head, breathing in the smell of his hair. Still rocking him back and forth, soothing, loving. “It's okay, sweetheart. It's okay. You have every right to feel the way you do. Never be sorry. _Never_ be sorry.”

His sobs wrack against her chest and all she can do is hold him. Though her heart has been ripped in two, she selfishly can't help being so terribly glad to be able to hold him. Her beautiful boy. Her strong, smart, beautiful boy. 

“Wh--” Flynn eventually manages through his strangled grief, “Why did Dad-- Why did he do it? _Why_?”

Skyler strokes his hair, tears streaming down her cheeks. “Because he's not the man we thought he was.”

“I _hate_ him!”

“I know.”

“I hope he's _dead_.”

“I know, sweetheart. I know.” She swallows. “I hope he is, too.”

Flynn's arms tighten around her. Holly's wails keep piercing through the silence. Skyler keeps rocking Flynn back and forth in her arms while his sobs finally begin to ease down. She can't bring herself to tell Flynn the truth: That no matter how much she hopes Walt is dead, she knows deep down in her bones that he isn't. It is only a matter of time before Walt tries one last time to plead for forgiveness, to beg her to believe that everything he did was for their family. He will try because that is all he wants to see; it is the lie he keeps telling himself to justify all the terrible things he has done.

She will be damned if she ever lets him near her family ever again.

*

Walt sags against the cabin's porch wall, panting. A string of bloodied saliva hangs from his lips. He rattles out a final hacking cough before carefully, slowly standing tall. He adjusts the heavy box containing $100,000 under his arm and draws in a deep and steadying breath.

His footsteps thud heavily down the creaky wooden steps and crunch into the soft snow. All is silent around him. Not a bird squabbling in the trees. Not a single whisper of frozen breeze. Nothing. Everything around him is deathly silent. Deathly still. Calm. It is as if the woods and the air is holding its breath, waiting. 

When he reaches the gate and stares down the long, lonely, winding road that leads the way to the nearest town, he steels himself with one final, determined breath. This is it. It's either now, while he still has what borrowed time he has left, or never.

He takes the first step onto the empty road. The time has come to put it all right.

*

While Jesse screams off into the desert from the compound with a delirious sobbing laugh, stones and dirt kicking up under the wheels of the car, while Skyler kisses her son goodnight tenderly on his forehead and gives him a small smile that is tired with a relief that she hasn't known for months, the coordinates of where to find Hank's body tucked safely away, Walt's glassy-eyed smile stares up at the ceiling of Jack Welker's meth lab.

Nothing has been put right, not really. Nothing can ever be put right. But at least the ticking timebomb has finally stopped ticking.

A fly lands on Walt's lifeless lips. It buzzes. Rubs its legs together. Then it takes off into the night.

**end.**


End file.
